ABSTRACT
Few can have held the 'language and manners of the Gael' more proudly than Evan MacColl, known also by his Gaelic title Clarsach nam Beann, 'the Mountain Harper'. Born the second son in a family of eight, at Kenmore, Lochfyneside, in the county of Argyleshire, MacColl survived in youth by working the land, road-mending and fishing for herring. MacColl’s connectedness with the granite ground of his native terrain is stressed by James Bailey, a poet and contemporary, who perceives an organic congruence between the mind of the poet and the elemental landscape from which he sprang. MacColl's first volume, The Mountain Minstrel, containing a series of Gaelic songs and poems, together with his earliest English poetry, was published in 1836. MacColl’s rugged advocacy of civil liberty is readily apparent in his disgust at the ‘fleechin, fleth’rin’’ dedications of ‘servile’ authors.
